nation's agriculture stagnant, and peasants
pouring in to search for jobs, Bangkok's pop
ulation now exceeds seven million people.
"Road transport is impossible; Klong
Toey, Bangkok's port, a mess," said Vissut
Sethaphut, senior vice president for research
and planning at Siam Commercial Bank.
Inthe dry comfort of a glass-bottom boat,
Japanese tourists enjoy a fish-eye view of the
Great Barrier Reef off Queensland. Last year
more than 500,000 Japanese visited Australia,
adding to the boom in regional air travel.
"We can't get raw materials in. We can't get
finished products out. We're at a stop."
To ease pressures on the capital, some two
dozen industrial estates have been built in
outlying areas in the past two years, and
more are planned. Biggest of them all is a
colossal Japanese-built, light- and heavy
industry port complex two hours' drive from
Bangkok called the Eastern Seaboard Devel
opment Project-at 1.5 billion dollars the
Thai government's largest undertaking ever.
Centerpiece of the project is the 356
million-dollar National Petrochemical Corpo
ration, which produces hydrocarbon gases for
petrochemical and plastics plants next door.
National's 328-foot-high distillation towers
glinted in the sun from a long way off. Bou
gainvillea cascaded down the driveway's
flanks. Jiravich Nathalang, secretary to the
vice president of operations, led me through
the reinforced-concrete computerized control
bunker. I asked him what the Japanese
presence meant to the Thai economy. He
responded as if in disbelief that anyone would
ask. "It means this plant. We employ 600 to
800 people. We save our economy about 400
million dollars a year by reducing imports.
And we've only just begun."
Why is all this taking place in Thailand?
It's more than just the cheap land
and labor. "Thailand, like Japan,
is Buddhist. And a monarchy.
And a civilized country with a
government that respects con
tracts and leaves business alone,"
Ambassador Okazaki explained.
"We're easy to get along
with," Narongchai Akrasanee,
director of the Thailand Develop
ment Research Institute Founda
tion, added. "For 700 years we've
been an inland trade route, a land
bridge between north and south.
We are mixed, like the Ameri
cans. Our identity is cultural not
ethnic: We're Thai, Indian,
Malay, Chinese-name it. There
is no racial discrimination here.
The Thai people rarely have
strong feelings about anything."
THEY HAVE SURELY DEVELOPED a fond
ness for things Japanese. Japanese is
taught in Thai schools. Japanese comic
books delight Thai kids. Japanese car
toons animate Thai TV. Siew-National, a
joint venture with Matsushita, claims at least
one color TV set in every upland village
serviced with electricity.
"We send buses to the distant villages to
demonstrate our products," Maevadi Nava
pan, Siew-National chairwoman, told me.
"It's like your old-fashioned Wild West
medicine shows. The whole side of the bus
opens up to color TVs." Among the favorites:
a series called Ku Kum (A Couple's Fate),
recounting the World War II romance of a
Thai girl and a Japanese soldier.
A hit tune from a Thai pop rock group
sums it up: "Samurai Ma Leew-The Samu
rai Have Arrived." But this time they
brought golf clubs, not swords-and the
Thais have taken up the game as well. Some
73 golf courses have been built so far, and at
least 59 more are under construction or in
planning, including an 800-million-dollar
development called the Kaeng Krachan Golf
National Geographic, November 1991